This performance had some very good singers indeed. Take Péter
Bárány, the countertenor who sings 'Mam' (Christopher Robson
on the Davies recording), the dreadful mother of the (silent throughout)
hero or 'dummy' (enacted here by Péter Takátsy with a floppy
precision worthy of a Marcel Marceau protégé). This
is exactly the world of Mark-Antony Turnage's 'Greek' (though there it is
the father, the bass, who is especially dreadful). With his Nefertiti-like
shuffle, incessant fussing and screeching remonstrances, Bárány
produced the epitome of awfulness, matched at least in part by Máté
Sólyom-Nagy's infuriating little brother and Anna Molnár's
atrocious elder sister -- albeit looking more like an aunt : Molnár
produced perhaps the best singing and performing of the evening; her appearance
(in altered role) as Antichrist, revolving on designer Péter Horgas's
superbly conceived multi-purpose daïs (-cum-rack-cum-ladder-cum-theocratic
plinth : Music Theatre Wales would be envious), felt not so much like a
new character : one almost felt the dreadful sister had herself resurrected,
and found her true métier.

In the opera, the central 'victim' is first assaulted (almost physically,
certainly neurally) by his family environ (Kovalik's simple staging of the
opening, with the cast arrayed in front of the television like some ghastly
TV Royle Family, merged with the look of The Simpsons -- a device
he has explored before in his work at Szeged Opera, worked a treat) and
by society at large (the law, church, medicine, judiciary); then 'sectioned',
as it were, for his antisocial traits (is the real offence his sexuality?),
and dissected and gutted (multicolour bloody streamers trailed from, and
controlling, a wheel of fortune) by four particularly sinister (and ominously)
singing Surgeons -- the same characters, recycled in new roles : Róbert
Urbán-Nagy (also the Headmaster), László Kéringer
(Dad), Máté Sólyom-Nagy (Brother) and Tamás
Bátor (Doctor).

Amidst these goings on, the series of 'apocalyptic' advertisements is
played out (Davies later recycled the 'advertisement' idea in two of his
Children's Operas and sundry other pieces) onstage -- the proscenium becoming,
in effect, the giant screen -- by a gaggle of sinuous, mainly red-clad, luridly
lit dancers and a less-than-pleasant Cat (a fairly capable Pop singer, Péter
Novák. Cats, it should be recalled, feature prominently in another
Davies operatic work, Cinderella).